Social media systems are generally designed to be highly accessible web-based systems, which can be configured to dynamically deliver or serve user-generated content, such as user profiles and user postings, to client systems. Such conventional social media systems allow for the creation and exchange of user-generated content, and are often referred to as Web 2.0 application systems.
Presently, social media systems can take the form of Blogs (B), Micro-Blogs (μB) and Social Networks (SN). Blogs and Micro-Blogs typically consist of individual web-accessible user profiles in which individual account holders can publish content, such as text, pictures, video and audio. In addition, some Blogs and Micro-Blogs allow individual account holders to push content to their friends and followers to view. The content published to Micro-Blogs differs from Blogs in that the user-content published to Micro-Blogs generally comprises short messages and HTML links to camera phone pictures, videos, and/or audio clips. On the other hand, Social Networks typically consist of individual web-accessible user profiles that can be associated with other user profiles of a common location, work place or college, and in some instances, Social Networks allow for two-way exchange of content. Common social media systems in use today include Blogging platforms, such as, WordPress, Typepad and Blogger, Micro-Blogs, such as, Twitter and Jaiku, and Social Networks, such as, Facebook and MySpace.
Currently, social media systems comprise a plurality of individual user accounts, which, for the purpose of publishing user-content, are each accessible in response to a corresponding user name and password. Accordingly, such conventional social media systems provide a publishing and delivery platform for individual users to publish and broadcast their user-content to numerous recipients, referred to, for example, as “friends” or “followers”. These types of publishing and broadcasting platforms in which user-content from one sender is published and broadcast to many receivers or recipients are, in some instances, referred to as one-to-many type communication systems.